Lean Organisations Need FAT People

Perhaps it is because most businesses do not take into account a company’s biggest and potentially greatest return on investment – the people.

When it comes to bottom line figures, and actions called for to trim the expenses of a company’s budget, it is ultimately to the workforce that a company will look to begin ‘cutbacks’.

Usually a company’s largest single expense, the wage bill appears to be the most obvious solution to bringing the balance back into line and making the bottom line ‘healthy’ again. Yet, it can be argued that by cutting the cost of the workforce a company actually begins to slash it’s own throat by reducing what is it’s greatest asset.

Historically, scant regard is paid to the commodity of human beings, the only assets that can generally improve over time without the necessity of replacement.

Appreciation, self-motivated development, and productivity that increases by simple valuation and fulfillment; what other company asset can boast the same return? Yet, ‘human resources’ are considered expendable within the board room by virtue of their prominent position upon the balance sheet.

Bay Jordan’s, ‘Lean Organisations Need FAT People: How to Grow your Human Assets’, explores the humanity within the asset entitled ‘workforce’, and calls for organisations to realise what lies behind the cliché that people are assets and to act accordingly.

Bay Jordan has proven himself as a manager and a leader in Southern Africa, Canada, and the UK. He attributes his career successes to an ability to help people recognise what needs to be done and then allowing them to get on and do it as they see best. Early in his management career he was surprised when his manager fed back as a negative the comment that, “Your people are better than you!” Having personally recruited and retained his team, Bay considered this to be a great compliment. In fact, after learning that he shared his philosophy with Andrew Carnegie who wanted to put on his gravestone,”Here lies a man who knew how to put into his service more able men than he was himself,” he still considers the compliment to be one of the greatest he has received. Unfortunately, even today, his former manager’s attitude prevails and is symptomatic of a prescriptive management style that inhibits performance and effective teamwork in most organisations. In this book! he explains the problem and shares ideas about creating the co-operation that will make any organisation more effective.